This invention relates to an apparatus which can be used by a dentist for applying a light-curable dental composition to a patient's teeth and simultaneously exposing the composition to light which will cure the composition. This invention particularly relates to an apparatus for filling a tooth cavity with a light-curable filling material while simultaneously exposing the filling material to light that will cure the material.
Apparatus, such as conventional amalgam carriers, are well known for filling dental cavities with controlled amounts of a hardenable filling material. Typically, such apparatus have included a cylinder that is open at the top and bottom and a plunger within the cylinder that can move from its top towards its bottom. The bottom of the cylinder has been adapted to pick up a predetermined amount of the filling material from a container in which the material has been prepared or stored and to hold the picked-up filling material while it is transferred from the container to a position adjacent the tooth cavity. The plunger has been adapted to force the filling material out of the bottom of the cylinder into the cavity in the tooth.
With a light-curable dental composition, it has generally been the practice to shine a light on the composition for a predetermined time after applying the composition to a tooth, so that the composition hardens and bonds with the tooth to form a suitable permanent part of the tooth. The curing light (e.g., blue) has had a predetermined specific wavelength which can effect rapid curing of the resins in the dental composition. The specific procedure used for exposing the dental composition to curing light has varied, however, depending upon the particular composition and the particular use thereof. For example, it has been the practice with certain compositions, used as filling materials for tooth cavities, to expose the compositions in the tooth cavities to predetermined amounts of curing light each time fresh quantities of the compositions have been inserted into the cavities.
However, conventional procedures for curing light-curable dental compositions have tended to endanger the eyes of dentists and dental technicians using such compositions on their patients' teeth. In this regard, the light used to cure such compositions has tended to shine into the dentists' or technicians' eyes or be reflected off of dental and instrument surfaces into their eyes. With repeated exposures to a curing light, the light has tended to irritate significantly the eyes of the dentists or technicians. Ways have been sought, therefore, for exposing such dental compositions to curing light in a manner such that the exposure of dentists' or technicians' eyes to curing light is minimized.